Mehdi Sanaei, Iranian Ambassador to Russia, Visits EUSP

by Zachary Waller, Gevorg Avetikyan


Relations between Iran and Russia have existed long before the USSR – two countries share a record of war and peace, contradiction and partnership

Generally relations between Russia and Iran in the second half of the 20th century up until current period can be divided into three large stages: between WWII and the Islamic Revolution in Iran; between the beginning of the 1980ies and the collapse of the USSR; and the modern stage of relations with Russia.

Throughout this period, Iran had several reasons to mistrust the USSR: the USSR did not want to draw its troops out of Iranian territory. At the same time, the Communists were quite a strong political force in Iran, a reason for Iran to be cautious. Iranian monarchy nevertheless had relations with the USSR – Mohammad Reza Shah has even paid two official visits to the USSR and the relations were generally better in the 1960s-late 1970s.

Iranian revolution changed the landscape at the end of the 1970ies. The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) became a new challenge, and Iranians did not appreciate the fact that not only the US but also the USSR was selling arms to Iraq. Thus, Iran has chosen to adhere to their own principle, put shortly as “Neither East, Nor West – Islamic Republic!”

The third stage of bilateral relations starts with the Soviet collapse. Throughout the past couple decades Iran has had different presidents (conservatives, reformers, moderates). Ambassador Sanaei identified three dimensions of Iran-Russia relations at this latest stage of their relations.

The International Dimension. Russia and Iran take similar positions in terms of world politics. Both nations stand for a multipolar world as opposed to creating a unipolar system of international relations.Both nations are against the application of double standards. “They tell Russia that Ukraine’s people should choose their own president, but we think the same should be in Syria. It should be the Syrians to decide, not the USA, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Turkey,” – said Ambassador Sanaei. If the Arab Spring is possible in Egypt, it could be possible in Yemen and Bahrain as well.

The Regional dimension. One of the brightest examples of Russian-Iranian cooperation is overcoming the crisis in Tajikistan in the 1990s. The Central Asian republic was torn apart by the civil and it was joint efforts of Russia and Iran that helped to stabilize the situation. Russia and Iran have also co-operated to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Just recently, the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan met to discuss the conflict. Russia and Iran have cooperated in the Caspian Sea region as well. There is active ongoing cooperation in the Middle East, serious coordination in Syria

Bilateral dimension. Ambassador Sanaei started with pointing out that all possible elements of bilateral relations that could exist between two states (such as politics, economics, culture, academia) do exist and work between Iran and Russia. Therefore, “the Iranian Ambassador to Russia is a very busy man”. There is one negative thing, however: despite strategic nature of these relations, the volume of trade is not too big. Efforts are taken to improve this, there are many joint consultations, the presidents have met for seven times during the past two years. However, the turnover in bilateral trade is still below $2 bln.










This is positive news for Iran, especially if some of that money goes to support Iran’s small natural gas industry. Unlike Russia, who exports huge amounts of natural gas, Iran has some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves but is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s natural gas trade. This is due to several factors, such as lack of LNG export terminals, lack of sufficient pipelines to export through, dearth of suitable neighbors to build pipelines through, and the lower quality of Iranian gas, which means it needs to be treated before being exported. However, even with all of those going against Iranian gas, there is one overarching point bearing the most responsibility: energy. With sanctions specifically targeting the energy sector, Iran simply could not develop its natural gas capabilities to anywhere near the level it could (and likely would) have otherwise.


The lecture was followed by a Q&A session


Mehdi Sanaei: Chief reason is that both countries are primarily exporting energy resources. Both are struggling with dependence on energy export revenues. Iran has progressed significantly. 80% of its budget used to be dependent on oil and gas exports, but in the 2015 budget that share was decreased to below 40%. In terms of agriculture, for example, Russia exports what Iran needs to import (grain, corn etc), and Iran exports things Russia needs (fruits, for example). We are solving the issue to make it possible for Iran to also export meat, dairy (milk etc) and other products to Russia.

Alfrid Bustanov: There are about 20 million Muslims in Russia. Is that a factor of bilateral relations, or do you take Russia as a country where only Russians (meaning the ethnic Russian/Orthodox) live?




Pierre Jouvellier: There are reports of a $7bln weapons sale deal, can you comment more about cooperation in the defense sector?


Russia has traditionally been active in two spheres: construction of power stations and railroads. In the past years, we have signed contracts for nuclear power plant construction, the modernization of Iran’s railroad system. We’re working on the realization of a $5 bln credit fund by Russia to support Iranian-Russian projects.



Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: